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Quicksands: A Memoir
When the history of modern prose in English comes to be written, Mrs. Bedford will have to appear in any list of its most dazzling practitioners.-Bruce Chatwin, Vogue
370 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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409 people want to read
About the author
Sybille Bedford
48 books99 followersSybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer. Many of her works are partly autobiographical. Julia Neuberger proclaimed her "the finest woman writer of the 20th century" while Bruce Chatwin saw her as "one of the most dazzling practitioners of modern English prose.
Works
The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico, a travelogue)
A Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work inspired by the early life of the author's father, which focuses on the brutality and anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class.
The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the murder trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams
The Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
A Compass Error - 1968 - a sequel to the above, describing the love affairs of the granddaughter of that work's protagonist
Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education - 1989 - a sort of followup to A Legacy, this novel was inspired by the author's experiences living in Italy and France with her mother
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice - 1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the Auschwitz trial, as well as pieces on food and travel.
Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe - a reissue of the above, removing the legal writings, and including two additional travel essays.
Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005 - A memoir of the author's life, from her childhood in Berlin to her experiences in postwar Europe.
Works
The Sudden View: a Mexican Journey - 1953 - (republished as A Visit to Don Otavio: a Traveller's Tale from Mexico, a travelogue)
A Legacy: A Novel - 1956 - her first novel, a work inspired by the early life of the author's father, which focuses on the brutality and anti-Semitism in the cadet schools of the German officer class.
The Best We Can Do: (The Trial of Dr Adams) - 1958 - an account of the murder trial of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams
The Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report - 1961 - a description of the legal systems of England, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
A Favourite of the Gods - 1963 - a novel about an American heiress who marries a Roman Prince
A Compass Error - 1968 - a sequel to the above, describing the love affairs of the granddaughter of that work's protagonist
Aldous Huxley: A biography - 1973 - the standard, authorized biography of Huxley
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education - 1989 - a sort of followup to A Legacy, this novel was inspired by the author's experiences living in Italy and France with her mother
As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice - 1990 - a collection of magazine pieces on various trials, including the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Jack Ruby, and the Auschwitz trial, as well as pieces on food and travel.
Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe - a reissue of the above, removing the legal writings, and including two additional travel essays.
Quicksands: A Memoir - 2005 - A memoir of the author's life, from her childhood in Berlin to her experiences in postwar Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
August 3, 2025
This is Bedford’s Christopher and His Kind, a gallery of the friends and relations who lent their features to characters of her later novels. Huxley is the guru-mentor instead of Forster. Her interwar circles were mainly gay, left-wing, expat English and émigré German; her bases London and Sanary-sur-Mer. The Midi was the perfect place for her youth and apprenticeship: sybaritic and sapiential, like herself, a landscape that sustained the reckless pleasure of coevals and the exemplary discipline of elders (Huxley writing every morning in his room, Meier-Graefe turning the “schoolboy stuff” of his first drafts into “pared-down eloquently sober German,” terse and polished like the few picked marbles in his “sublimely uncluttered” villa). Immortals turned up at odd times:
In 1935, with her opposition to the Nazis well-known and her German passport about to expire, Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck entered a mariage blanc with Walter “Terry” Bedford, a British subject and an ex-lover of Auden’s butler. The reception sounds wild:
Having finished this memoir and the novels, I move on to her crime reportage and the scattered culinary essays. I’m dying to know what she made of Jack Ruby’s trial.
And there were the picnics, those Huxley picnics at sundown on beach or olive grove or cliff, when Matthew and Sophie and the fast and handsome Sanary young mixed with startled middle-aged French and ruffled eminent Germans. Never shall I forget the sight of Mrs. Wharton, rotund, corseted, flushed and beautifully dressed, Paul Valéry and Madame Paul Valéry, frail sexagenerians, being led by Aldous towering and hesitatingly encouraging up a goat track on a rock face to the nonchalantly chosen picnic ground. There they would be given fried rabbit, zucchini flowers, and jugs of iced punch - white wine, lemon, rum - made by Aldous himself.
In 1935, with her opposition to the Nazis well-known and her German passport about to expire, Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck entered a mariage blanc with Walter “Terry” Bedford, a British subject and an ex-lover of Auden’s butler. The reception sounds wild:
Maria [Huxley] insisted also on a real wedding party - to celebrate and thank all who had helped us. And a very mixed party it was. When Terry saw the guest list, he said he would not come unless he could bring “his own background.” Well of course. And so we had, among others, and I don’t know why: Virginia Woolf, some minor politicians, our godfather designer, one or two Quakers, quite a few Bloomsburys and, led by Terry, half a dozen showgirls, very pretty (delighting Aldous) and some tough males, bruisers rather than ephebes. Virginia Woolf came up to me, took mine into her exquisite hand (I had not met her before, nor after). “This,” she said, “is a very queer party, I can’t understand anything about it: one day you must come and tell me.”
Having finished this memoir and the novels, I move on to her crime reportage and the scattered culinary essays. I’m dying to know what she made of Jack Ruby’s trial.
February 21, 2010
What is there to say about Sybille Bedford? She's probably one of the the most underrated, brilliant, intelligent writers of the English language of the last century - and Quicksands, her wonderful, fascinating memoir, only confirms that. Bedford's life is astonishing - from Germany at the dawn of WWI to post-WWII Italy, she's seen it all, and she knows how to talk about it with a powerful, intoxicating sense of evocation. Hers is a charmed life in many ways, and yet it's also a difficult life, filled with bittersweet, difficult, painful moments and trials. What's amazing, in this book, is the way the writer looks at her past - with much empathy for the people she's met (the portraits she paints of her family and friends, famous or not, are incredibly moving and heartfelt), without sentimentality when it comes to her own destiny, with humor and emotion, with a touch of nostalgia that becomes sometimes heartbreaking. Her writing is perfect, as usual - and considering that English is not her first language, it's quite a feast. The structure itself is unusual for such a book, and all the more delightful : Bedford jumps from one memory to another without following a specific chronological order, she deliberately avoids some topics (like her private love life, only briefly talked about, or things she's already written about in her previous books), she passes over entire decades: that does not create confusion or frustration, on the contrary - it gives the impression of having a conversation with her, of meeting her intimately by a fire and letting her remember. As one critic wrote, it's "syncopated", and indeed there is a musical quality to this book: you can almost "hear" it as you read it. The events, places, people she talks about make us want to know more,of course, to know it all, but she cleverly doesn't totally open up, and we end up basking in the enchantment of a mystery (herself, her own complicated life) not quite entirely resolved.
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February 8, 2007with a disregard to timelines that only a 90 year-old could afford with a memoir, Sybille Bedford - who, by the way, has an enchanting way with the literary 'aside' – created a spledidly woven masterpiece just months before her passing in 2005. So beautiful, I myself plan on writing my memoirs once I reach 90.
May 2, 2012
‘I shall begin as I hope to continue: from the middle.’
Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer: a novelist, journalist and biographer. She was born Sybille von Schoenebeck in Berlin. Her parents were Baron Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853–1925 and his wife, Elizabeth Bernard (1888- 1937). Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her father at Schloss Feldkirch in Baden, and had a half-sister, from her father's first marriage ( Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck).
Her parents divorced in 1918, and she remained with her father, until his death in 1925. Sybille then went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather. With the rise of fascism in Italy, her mother and stepfather settled in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing village in the south of France. Sybille settled there as a teenager, living near Maria and Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends. Sybille Bedford also met some of the other writers and intellectuals (including Alma Mahler, Wilhelm Herzog, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht) who also settled in this area during that period.
During this period, Sybille’s mother became addicted to morphine and, in what was for me, some of the most moving writing in this memoir, Sybille describes how this occurred and how she became responsible for procuring and administering the drug to her mother. There is no self-pity in Ms Bedford’s account, simply a description of causation, events and consequences.
‘My next account – not joyful – will have to be about a destructive blow of fate brought about through a blend of antecedents, chance, ill luck.’
In 1935, Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with Walter ‘Terry’ Bedford. The marriage did not last, her use of his family name did. With the assistance of Maria and Aldous Huxley, Sybille Bedford left France for America before the German invasion of France. Her memoir ends once she is in America.
‘Wish I could tell the half of it … But, I repeat, there seems to be no time.’
‘Had I but world enough and time … I have not. And shall not now write about the life that followed.'
This memoir covers Sybille Bedford’s life from World War I in Berlin, to World War II when she leaves Europe for the USA. I do not recognise much of the world in which she lived and of which she writes, but her writing gave me some sense of that world and of her experiences within it. At one stage, when she has a guest for a period, she writes:
‘What I minded was the loss of solitude – essential to the cashing in of writing-thoughts.’
This is the first of her books I have read: I hope to read some of her novels later this year. I enjoyed both the content and the presentation of this memoir. I found it inspiring: there is no room for self-pity, nor is there any sign of resentment. Things just happen, and they are written about. Perspectives may change.
‘To get into one language deeply, I found, one has to forsake all others.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer: a novelist, journalist and biographer. She was born Sybille von Schoenebeck in Berlin. Her parents were Baron Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck (1853–1925 and his wife, Elizabeth Bernard (1888- 1937). Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her father at Schloss Feldkirch in Baden, and had a half-sister, from her father's first marriage ( Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck).
Her parents divorced in 1918, and she remained with her father, until his death in 1925. Sybille then went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather. With the rise of fascism in Italy, her mother and stepfather settled in Sanary-sur-Mer, a small fishing village in the south of France. Sybille settled there as a teenager, living near Maria and Aldous Huxley, with whom she became friends. Sybille Bedford also met some of the other writers and intellectuals (including Alma Mahler, Wilhelm Herzog, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht) who also settled in this area during that period.
During this period, Sybille’s mother became addicted to morphine and, in what was for me, some of the most moving writing in this memoir, Sybille describes how this occurred and how she became responsible for procuring and administering the drug to her mother. There is no self-pity in Ms Bedford’s account, simply a description of causation, events and consequences.
‘My next account – not joyful – will have to be about a destructive blow of fate brought about through a blend of antecedents, chance, ill luck.’
In 1935, Sybille entered a marriage of convenience with Walter ‘Terry’ Bedford. The marriage did not last, her use of his family name did. With the assistance of Maria and Aldous Huxley, Sybille Bedford left France for America before the German invasion of France. Her memoir ends once she is in America.
‘Wish I could tell the half of it … But, I repeat, there seems to be no time.’
‘Had I but world enough and time … I have not. And shall not now write about the life that followed.'
This memoir covers Sybille Bedford’s life from World War I in Berlin, to World War II when she leaves Europe for the USA. I do not recognise much of the world in which she lived and of which she writes, but her writing gave me some sense of that world and of her experiences within it. At one stage, when she has a guest for a period, she writes:
‘What I minded was the loss of solitude – essential to the cashing in of writing-thoughts.’
This is the first of her books I have read: I hope to read some of her novels later this year. I enjoyed both the content and the presentation of this memoir. I found it inspiring: there is no room for self-pity, nor is there any sign of resentment. Things just happen, and they are written about. Perspectives may change.
‘To get into one language deeply, I found, one has to forsake all others.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
July 27, 2007
While slightly disjointed at times, this is a fascinating memoir. Bedford's portrait of France's expat literary world in the buildup to WWII was the most interesting part of the book for me, but I found her discussion of her development as a writer quite interesting as well.
April 13, 2023
Sybille war meine Begleitung in den Champagne-Urlaub und unterhielt mich mit ihren Plaudereien über die Berühmtheiten, Katastrophen und Lebensgeschichten des letzten Jahrhunderts gut.
Allerdings springt sie viel zwischen Jahren und Momenten hin und her, sodass ich, wenn mich die Neugier packte, häufig enttäuscht wurde, da es nicht in die Tiefe, sondern in die nächste Anekdote ging. Zudem sind diese Memoiren eher selbstrefentiell - eine Kenntnis ihrer anderen Romane ist sinnvoll. Aber da diese Bücher sensationell gute Unterhaltung sind, würde ich sie eh jedem ans Herz legen.
Insgesamt macht das Buch Spaß, seltsamerweise selbst dann, wenn sie Krisen und Tiefpunkte sowohl historischer als auch privater Art schildert. Das ergibt sich aus Bedfords lebendigem, sprudelnden Erzählstil - oft hat man das Gefühl mit ihr im Schatten zu sitzen, irgendwo an der Riviera, eine offene Flasche Wein auf dem Tisch und Tante Billy erzählt eben wieder mal was Interessantes, z.B. wie Aldous Huxley ihr in London zur Staatsbürgerschaft verhielf, sie Thomas Manns Pudel durch die USA chauffierte oder sie das Marmorbad ihrer kleiner Hütte auf einem römischen Dach ruinierte.
„Mein Vater war ein Feinschmecker, er wusste, was gut war, wann und wo man Lebensmittel einkaufte, wie man sie zubereitete und servierte. Er war selbst ein guter Koch, hatte sich mit den bekannten Köchen seiner Zeit angefreundet, mit ihnen Champagner getrunken (den sie tranken, um kühlen Kopf zu bewahren), in der Hitze des Gefechts sogar aus der Flasche getrunken, die er mit der linken Hand hielt, während die Rechte mit einem Löffel oder Hackmesser hantierte.“
„Gewiss, nachdem der Zug die Alpen überquert hatte und langsam in ein sonniges, fruchtbares Tal fuhr, hatte ich einen Zustand schierer Freude erlebt, die Erfüllung einer Sehnsucht, die in vielen von uns schlummert, die wir im Regen geboren wurden.“
Allerdings springt sie viel zwischen Jahren und Momenten hin und her, sodass ich, wenn mich die Neugier packte, häufig enttäuscht wurde, da es nicht in die Tiefe, sondern in die nächste Anekdote ging. Zudem sind diese Memoiren eher selbstrefentiell - eine Kenntnis ihrer anderen Romane ist sinnvoll. Aber da diese Bücher sensationell gute Unterhaltung sind, würde ich sie eh jedem ans Herz legen.
Insgesamt macht das Buch Spaß, seltsamerweise selbst dann, wenn sie Krisen und Tiefpunkte sowohl historischer als auch privater Art schildert. Das ergibt sich aus Bedfords lebendigem, sprudelnden Erzählstil - oft hat man das Gefühl mit ihr im Schatten zu sitzen, irgendwo an der Riviera, eine offene Flasche Wein auf dem Tisch und Tante Billy erzählt eben wieder mal was Interessantes, z.B. wie Aldous Huxley ihr in London zur Staatsbürgerschaft verhielf, sie Thomas Manns Pudel durch die USA chauffierte oder sie das Marmorbad ihrer kleiner Hütte auf einem römischen Dach ruinierte.
„Mein Vater war ein Feinschmecker, er wusste, was gut war, wann und wo man Lebensmittel einkaufte, wie man sie zubereitete und servierte. Er war selbst ein guter Koch, hatte sich mit den bekannten Köchen seiner Zeit angefreundet, mit ihnen Champagner getrunken (den sie tranken, um kühlen Kopf zu bewahren), in der Hitze des Gefechts sogar aus der Flasche getrunken, die er mit der linken Hand hielt, während die Rechte mit einem Löffel oder Hackmesser hantierte.“
„Gewiss, nachdem der Zug die Alpen überquert hatte und langsam in ein sonniges, fruchtbares Tal fuhr, hatte ich einen Zustand schierer Freude erlebt, die Erfüllung einer Sehnsucht, die in vielen von uns schlummert, die wir im Regen geboren wurden.“
September 23, 2011
The first half of the book recalls the extraordinary childhood and adolescence of the author. Unfortunately, the latter part relies mainly on irritating name-dropping and does not add much substance. It should be noted that much of the material of the first half can also be read in 'Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education', which is also a better read.
July 17, 2017
Bedford wrote "Quicksands" in her 90s, and it definitely has the rambling feeling of getting in those last words and topping off or recording events not included in her other 10+ books. I picked it up to get a different perspective on a half-jewish, German girl born in 1910: to see how she fared in Europe during the wars. It is an amazing story, since her parents were aristocratic and never really sent her to school (she didn't know how to write till she was ten). Also her parents divorced and she basically wandered the world, determined to be a writer. She was sheltered by the Aldous Huxleys and various other writers, and even managed to obtain a passport from England once her German passport expired. Apt title, with no easy chronology.
November 22, 2025
3.5: Great snapshots of a time and place long gone and fun snippets of literary gossip, but a bit meandering and fragmented. Jigsaw still my favorite Bedford, covering similar ground in auto-fictional style. Makes the France and Italy of long ago really attractive 😊
October 8, 2012
Didn't really enjoy this much. I read to about p112. I think you had to be there in Europe after WWII and know some of the literary people of the time to enjoy it. Plus it jumped around all over the place - not surprising for a book written by a woman well into her 90s or older when she wrote it. Not finished 7 October 2012
October 4, 2010
This would be a book that I wouldn't recommend. Since English is her secondary language, the writing at times can be halting. And seriously I never got a decent grade on an of my essays and she writes like I do. Don't read this book unless there is nothing else to read around the house.
January 5, 2014
This is a beautifully digressive, luminous and supremely alive memoir. It illuminates places, people and periods with the author's trademark 'radiant intelligence' and bears endless, repeated rereading. It's beautiful and exemplifies the very best in life writing.
September 12, 2019
When I read Quicksands, especially in the beginning, I felt like I started watching a movie where I definitely missed the beginning and also the first and second part. Of cource it's an interesting perspective from which Sybille Bedorf can write this autobiographical note book (it is more or less a note book, or maybe a non-chronological diary): a young woman being able to travel between the european cultures so freely in the beginning of the 20th century! And I would love to have had more details on special parts about the places, the people and their characters, the relationships between them, etc. But Bedford writes like she needs to get out all the rest of the memories she couldn't write down yet in one of her other novels (which I haven't read). It's a shame somehow. There's been so many names, sometimes just dropped as if she needs to write the name down to remember he or she had been part of her life. For me, as an outsider of her life, I had no chance to understand Bedfords character, her motifs of acting, her passions, anything, really.
July 4, 2022
Sybille Bedford finished her career by finally writing a memoir. One might think such a thing wasn't necessary since all of her books were highly autobiographical (not to mention her collected essays on travel) but readers can still learn a few new details of her life her. We can read, for the first time, about the first few years of her post-war adventures in Europe. We can also learn the ultimate fate of her mother, and what actually happened to her father's money. We also get the full story of her marriage of convenience to Terry Bedford.
But much of Bedford's story remains elusive. We don't really learn what happened to her young stepfather, nor much of what she got up to in the second half of her life. We don't even learn the full names of some of the important players in her life. There is very little about Bedford' longtime partner Eda Lord.
I suppose readers should look to the new biography of Bedford by Selina Hastings (published in 2021) for those details. It is certainly on my to-read list.
But much of Bedford's story remains elusive. We don't really learn what happened to her young stepfather, nor much of what she got up to in the second half of her life. We don't even learn the full names of some of the important players in her life. There is very little about Bedford' longtime partner Eda Lord.
I suppose readers should look to the new biography of Bedford by Selina Hastings (published in 2021) for those details. It is certainly on my to-read list.
January 30, 2020
Quicksands is beautifully beautifully written. As are all her books.
Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford.... WHO is she....????
Will try and find quote. Probably somewhere in The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.
It's not just prose.. 'SO that .. and much else..... lay behind us in the post war summer on Ischia three decades later when I found myself...' Read on.. Page 40....
My second hand book is a library book?????? Withdrawn stamped on the fly leaf??? Nottinghamshire
County Council.
Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford.... WHO is she....????
Will try and find quote. Probably somewhere in The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.
It's not just prose.. 'SO that .. and much else..... lay behind us in the post war summer on Ischia three decades later when I found myself...' Read on.. Page 40....
My second hand book is a library book?????? Withdrawn stamped on the fly leaf??? Nottinghamshire
County Council.
December 27, 2020
I had never heard of this writer, and I wish I had read her earlier books before this one, which is an end of life memoir that she often mentions, covers territory she has already written about. I believe I read at one point that she wrote this book for money. It's so interesting and some of the events, treated with objectivity, even nonchalance, are harrowing. I'm going to read her other books.
February 20, 2022
Man liest immer weiter, kann aber gar nicht genau sagen, warum. Fragmentarisch, praktisch - aber dennoch irgendwie interessant (auch wenn eine Zusammenfassung oder Nacherzählung wohl nie gelänge...).
Schade, daß eine Frau, die so vielen Berühmtheiten auf ihrem Lebensweg begegnet ist, ihren autobiographischen Schwerpunkt eben leider nicht auf diese Begegnungen legt. Auch über sie selber erfahren wir leider nur Oberflächliches.
Ganz nett - aber ohne Tiefgang. Schade.
Schade, daß eine Frau, die so vielen Berühmtheiten auf ihrem Lebensweg begegnet ist, ihren autobiographischen Schwerpunkt eben leider nicht auf diese Begegnungen legt. Auch über sie selber erfahren wir leider nur Oberflächliches.
Ganz nett - aber ohne Tiefgang. Schade.
May 14, 2025
Jumpy and disjointed. Reads like what it is - something dictated in a conversational, cursory, jumpy manner. Still fairly interesting about the life of the kind of person who probably doesn't exist anymore - left to her own devices from an early age, bouncing around Europe between the wars, friends with the intellectual and literati of the era, no schooling, no reliable family and not at all a tragedy.
November 18, 2021
Autobiography of life between the wars ( 1 and 11) as part of the old and poor aristocracy living in France, Italy and England. Aldous Huxley was a close friend. Lots of info on him.Her works are dense, exotic, rich with historical hindsight
February 12, 2018
The sentences with their long parenthetical inserts were fun, perspective-shifting. I enjoyed her rosy stories about the Huxleys because I also had a teenage reading crush on Aldous Huxley.
August 31, 2018
I chose this book to follow up some lose threads from Jigsaw. It tells a very similar story, maybe not quite as well written as Jigsaw but still very moving and interesting.
January 29, 2019
Fascinating !
June 18, 2019
Unflinching self-evaluation, which I deeply respect.
November 12, 2021
Lovely recollections across 70 years lived in tumultuous times. Ms. Bedford writes with grace. This was a pleasure to read.
July 15, 2023
DNF
WGAF
WGAF
January 17, 2013
This memoir is fascinating for the singular position of the narrator during the unparalleled turmoil of the early-mid C20th. Tracing recollections of her past, from a childhood in a German chateau to a peripatetic existence being shuttled from Italy to England to the South of France and back again as hostilities erupted across Europe, the author questions the nature of identity and fate. She maintains a detached conversational tone, jumping back from a mid-point to fill in the gaps of her own path to becoming a published writer. Included are some wonderful character studies of literary giants with whom she came into contact. A captivating personal saga.
July 25, 2015
Giving a rating to this book is a bit meaningless because it is unfinished. Years ago I was bowled over by "A Legagy" and always meant to read more Sybille Bedford. She had a fascinating life, and the talent to turn it into great literature. "Quicksands" gets off to a brilliant start, but illness and old age overtook Bedford during the writing of it, and the last few pages are mere notes. The more is the pity because I already knew quite a bit about her childhood and her time in Sanary, and hoped to learn more about the second half of her life. While this is invaluable for Bedford's fans, it is not the ideal introduction to her œuvre.
Read
August 4, 2009Another memoir by a clever European writer. Bedford is not always easy to follow, she bounces back and forth in time crisscrossing her path many times over. Then there is her style. Choppy. Short sentences. Like that. But it's a fascinating life speckled with weird relations and to-ing and fro-ing across Europe. She knew Aldous Huxley, the Mann brothers and the Fitzgibbons.
March 25, 2014
A freak of literature. Her style is as annoying as it is free. This is a history of autodidacticism -- she could not yet write when she was finally sent briefly to a proper school as a teenager. A portrait of the charm of mid-world war cosmopolitanism. By the ultimate Aldous Huxley lesbian groupie.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews